What is the best way to begin? This was something that consumed my thoughts all day. Papers after papers, now sitting in front of my laptop searching for words to fill  the white space, I realized that this is what I had been doing always, since becoming an architecture student and an architect. Filling the void. So here we go with the flow.

Coming from an architectural background in India, where the studies are carried out for five years, covering all sectors of architectural practice, you are set free to the occupational jungle where the fittest survives. With the amount of knowledge stuffed inside soon after finishing the bachelors, everybody reaches a point where decisions are to be made about who you are going to be?

Those days of constant confusions and self-assessments, I travelled around the cities, spent days observing, met different people, witnessed and experienced variety of built environments. I had slowly started to realize a fact which was not taught, that each line you draw to fill the white space impacts the site, surroundings, neighborhood and the city. Like a “butterfly effect”. This thought ignited a spark. Curious kid in me has now a choice. This marked the beginning of my journey towards becoming an urban designer.

A Space communicates to you in different ways. It looks like the hand crushed papers have something to tell.

Fig 1:  Hand crushed papers randomly thrown depicts the communication of patterns, texture, orientation and inter-relation of scales to the people and landscape. A depiction of place made and occupants contributing to its spirit!

“WE” are the city..

From the unintended understandings obtained from casual journeys of mine, I believe that cities are the resulting reflection of living and non-living entities occupying the space. Urban spaces are complex structures formed from combination of networks which caters the needs of occupants and vice versa. Hence mutual development process is an inevitable uninterrupted mechanism in place making.

Being new to the academic practices in the field, I had a different perspective on urban design. I believed it as a crossroad to cure the modern day urban problems by creating instant solutions. However, I was corrected in the day 1 itself. As it is, the city of Rome was not built in a day. Time is an invisible companion of each development. Time makes inevitable changes in the community life and these changes alter the original significance of the architectural forms. Every city goes through continuous evaluation and evolution. It evolves itself organically with human and non-human species, their needs and social interactions. This image of the city is used as a base for alternatives which could better both people and the place. This is my understanding about the process of practice.

Finally, I personally find the diverse atmosphere and contrasting teaching method in the university much more interesting compared to my experience during bachelors. With included activities like writing blogs and seminar sessions  it could act as a supporting factor in developing constructive ideas for effective communication and understanding different perspectives of other students on variety of topics. Not only it would challenge yourself to break a safe zone, it develops a collective engagement of groups within the academic practice. Each and every sessions contributes something new to your understanding and excitement is at the epitome as I am slowly walking towards becoming an urban designer.